


Deeply Awake

by LizzieRimmsy



Series: Two Immortals [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Emetophobia, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Random & Short, Song: Beautiful (Mr Fijiwiji)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-04 01:46:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16337372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzieRimmsy/pseuds/LizzieRimmsy
Summary: When you can't sleep, what can you do? Think randomly, have existential crises, ask the really deep questions, and of course some form of sex.





	Deeply Awake

**Author's Note:**

> This one is all over the place, so bear with me. Lack of sleep my own self, coupled with other things, it got a bit random. And a bit smutty. ;) Wasn’t my intention, but it went there anyway.
> 
> Also, I wrote this a few days before my birthday, when I _myself_ was having rampant thoughts. This is what became of those thoughts. Parts of this was supposed to be in a gap filler between Cured and Siliconia, but I lost the draft sadly.

Neither of them could sleep. While one stared at the ceiling, the other blanked out, hazel eyes fixated on the wall beside him. Both of them exhausted but couldn't switch off.  
  
The room was soundless; no air con, no telly, loud annoying guitar, no yowling Cat, just nothing but the soft, low rumble of _Red Dwarf’s_ engines.  
  
Aria glanced over at the still, yet nonetheless awake hologram. The corner of her mouth tugged in a half smile. _I wonder what he’s thinking? Probably about exams or planning ahead for tomorrow._  
  
She could not have been more wrong.  
  
_What a fool believes… he sees no wise man has the– Tsk! Dammit, why the smeg did she have to play that idiotic song? Now it’ll be in my head for ages!_  
  
It wasn’t exactly her fault the popular nineteen-seventies song was incredulously catchy, but since The Doobie Brothers were now dead, he had to blame it on someone.  
  
“Arn?”  
  
Rimmer peered over his shoulder before laying his head down once more. “Hmm?”  
  
She rolled onto her side, propping her head up with her hand. “What’s it like?” She then stared attentively at the hologram and eagerly waited for his response.  
  
At first, his only response was an unseen furrow of his brow in puzzlement. Soon after he, too, turned over on his side to face her, his expression still quizzical. “What’s what like?” he asked.  
  
“Being dead? I mean, I’ve died but never actually stayed dead, y’know.”  
  
A blank gaze briefly preceded an arched, questioning eyebrow and scrunched up nose whilst bloodshot eyes peeked over her to get a look at the time. _Five in the morning, too early for this smeg._  
  
“I was just wondering,” she said with a slightly disappointed tone. “You don’t have to tell me.”  
  
He couldn’t even if he wanted to; he didn’t know how to describe it. Shortly after becoming a hologram, he had said it was like being on holiday with a group of Germans. There was this strong resentfulness he felt when he found out from Holly that he had died, his life cut short at the age of thirty.  
  
_Or was it thirty-one?_ It felt like a lifetime ago — he wasn’t so sure anymore.  
  
Despite his system’s blaring demand to ignore the need to exhale, he still let out a long, deep sigh anyway. “I don’t know. I _do_ know there’s nothing.”  
  
“No, I knew that,” she responded, wincing as she remembered every death she ever had; all fifteen of them. "But you’re lucky, d’you know that?”  
  
“Lucky?” He scoffed. “I’m dead, how lucky is that?”  
  
She shrugged, though her pillow impeded it slightly. “In twenty-twelve… the year the world was going to end,” she began in a mock eerie way, followed by a snort of cynicism. “It was the end of _my_ world, I’ll tell you that. Or would have been, if…”  
  
Now intrigued, even more than a little concerned, Rimmer shifted closer to her.  
  
It was hard for her to admit. She hadn’t told anyone before. Still, she took in a lungful and mustered up the courage to finally admit something about her to him. He opened up to her so many times — most of which were inadvertent — she owed him at least one explanation.  
  
“I hadn’t been eating much back then. I was emetophobic, you see. Still am,” A shaky breath left her, then she begrudgingly continued on. “I was so scared of being ill that I starved myself thinking it would help. Told myself that I would only do it for a day, but that day turned into _days_ , then _weeks_ … _months_ . Before I knew it it was ten months later and I was down four dress sizes. Things had shut down at nine months and, well, you can probably guess.”  
  
“You died?”  
  
“I kept dying,” she chortled. “Over and over and over again. Until I finally ate.”  
  
Worry marred the hologram’s face. _She said ‘still’. Is she doing this now? Come to think of it I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen her eat anything._ Hesitantly, he asked a question he wasn’t sure he wanted to be answered: “Are you… still that way?”  
  
“Phobic?” She lifted her shoulders in another stymied shrug. “Not as bad as I was, but yeah. It comes and goes but never stays away.”  
  
_That’s what I was afraid of_. “Is this why you haven’t been eating lately?”  
  
She hesitated to respond. All she could think about was how guilty she felt in that moment. It wasn’t entirely something she was proud of, starving herself. She hated that she was falling back into the same old patterns, but fear and paranoia ruled her. Though she felt like death, or what she assumed death felt like, she couldn’t eat. It somehow felt better when she didn’t. It was almost addicting.  
  
Even Rimmer felt ashamed of himself. She was suffering, putting herself through hell and he didn’t notice. He had seen her holding and rubbing her wrists, sternum and thumbs, which he thought was odd, but he never thought anything of it. Yet another reason to hate himself.  
  
_How could I be so blind? I’m such a smegging idiot! Why… is she not answering me? That’s really irritating._  
  
“I, uh…”  
  
_Oh, finally._  
  
“It’s hard for me, okay?”  
  
Now he had a puzzled expression. “What, eating?”  
  
“I know, it’s silly,” she said with another breathy laugh, then began to trail off. “Being afraid of food. But it isn’t just that; it’s avoiding people, never going out, panicking over the slightest twinges in the stomach. I’m sick of it, but I can’t make it stop. It’s not like every other fear, like not getting on a plane or having someone else kill a spider. It’s… it’s _you_ . And you can’t run from yourself.”  
  
He couldn’t argue with that. In the past, he tried to flee from his obsessive thoughts. While he was still alive, he would go into stasis for a time not only to retain his young looks but to escape. For a while, he was away from Lister, the grind of Z-shift… himself. Nowadays he would shut himself off for a period of time. But then he wound up missing the crew, so he would turn back on within a few hours. Turns out he couldn’t be alone with himself either.  
  
“But how does _your_ fear of failing a fortitude save make _me_ lucky?” he instead asked.  
  
“Because your time already came,” she replied with a mirthless snicker. “You don’t have to deal with any of this anymore. Me? I'm still going, continuing to suffer through anxiety and more deaths and God knows what else.”  
  
Rimmer reposed onto his back, his hand placed behind his head. “I might be dead but I still feel…” came a response as soft as his spaced out, hazel-eyed gaze.  
  
“I know,” she said with a windy sigh as she lightly stroked the inside of his forearm. “Sorry.”  
  
“Feel, need, want…” More with it, he shifted his head and cast her a glance. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made tea and had Lister lecture me.” Then, in a dead-on impression of the scouser himself, he mimicked, “'What are you doin’ that for, man? Holograms don’t need tea'.”  
  
Now that he was fully smegged off just from remembering that and all the other times he had been reminded he was dead, even with how alive he actually was for a hologram, he rolled his eyes and huffed out an airless breath.  
  
Aria, however, was slightly amused, and started to giggle uncontrollably. It promptly ended when he shot her a glare.  
  
“Sorry, I’m not poking fun. It’s just… That was _really_ good!” she exclaimed, chuckling at the end of her sentence.  
  
“Well, when you’ve been around that slobby git for far too long, you tend to pick up on things.”  
  
“Or you’re just bored, miladdio.” she said, impersonating the hologram. Once again a reprimanding gaze shut her up quickly. “Oh come on! Was I even close?”  
  
“Not even in the star system,” he lied. A smug grin was plastered on his face. Though he wouldn’t admit it to her face, her impression was a little too well done. _Do_ _I_ _really_ _sound_ _like_ _that?_  
  
“Ah, well,” She shrugged one last time. “Maybe with a bit of practice.” After leaning in closer to him, she playfully cooed, “Say more words.”  
  
A single eyebrow raised in question. “Like?”  
  
“Mmm, keep goin’.” Her words came low and huskily.

“Erm… stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for Christmas.” he said in a poor imitation of Ace.  
  
Her nose bunched up, as though she had caught a whiff of Lister’s moon boots. “The hell was that?”  
  
His faux smug, gitty smirk quickly washed away like chalk drawings in the spring rain. “You… didn’t like that?"  
  
“No. Just…” She eyed him up and down, hoping he’d never do it again. “No.”  
  
Finally, he met someone who disliked Ace as much as he did. At last, he came across someone who got the same sour ball of disgust whenever that name was mentioned. He rejoiced until he realised one tiny detail: although she wouldn’t have known it, the particular Ace he was portraying was not only his version that he played up in his head, but also his version from thirteen years ago. Essentially, ultimately, it was him she was disgusted in.  
  
“Ah. Right,” he murmured, crestfallen.  
  
“Hey,” She raked her short fingers as best as she could through his unmanageable curls. “It’s just one voice. Doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”  
  
Hope was instilled in him once more. “Y-you, do?”  
  
“You know I do!” She chuckled again, clocking his boyish, coy simper. “In fact, I love you enough to change for the better.”  
  
“Does that mean you’ll eat something?”  
  
She heavily sighed, then with a defeated drawl she simply replied, “Yes. Later.”

The longer her bright blue eyes lingered over him, the dirtier her thoughts became. His query was already loaded enough as it was, and she just added more fodder to the cannon.  
  
“You know… I'm a bit hungry now, actually,” she admitted. Her eyebrows rose and fell a couple of times, a playful smirk plastered on her face.

“Well, we’re a little low on food.”  
  
Her eyes scrolled back into her head extensively. _Captain oblivious here…_ She then slipped under the covers unnoticed.  
  
“There might be some biscuits left o–” He drew in a stuttered gasp when she tugged off his bottoms and began touching him slowly. His eyebrows shot up; hazel eyes widened. “Ohhh _ssssmmmmeg!_ ”  
  
He shivered as her fingers slightly traversed his hips like stranded travellers roaming soft hills of sand. That’s when he felt himself getting as hard as combinatorics. His eyes closed tight like a man in desperate prayer, begging to a higher entity that he wouldn't finish too soon.  
  
“Relax, Arnold.” came her response from underneath the sheets.  
  
So he stopped fighting it and let go. He swelled and throbbed just from the mere touch of her fingertips.  
  
_Why… are you… so… easy?!_  
  
She didn’t care if he was easy. As long as she was making him feel content, even if she wasn’t going to get anything in return, it was all that mattered to her. After she wrenched the covers away, clocking his countenance of ecstasy, she soon found she was doing a great job.  
  
It wasn’t long before things pulsated enough to squeeze out a bit of pre-cum. More trickled out when her fingers slid closer to his pelvis. His eyes fluttered shut once more as he felt her hand gently wrap around him, followed by a long moan.  
  
The sparkle in her eyes spelt mischief. She gave him an elvish grin, even though he couldn’t see it. _That’s what I like to see._  
  
Slowly but with purpose her hand slid up the length of Rimmer's shaft, then back down, pumping while the hologram was quivering and clinging onto the bed frame, digging the fingers of his free hand into the sheets, begging for more with a light mewling.  
  
Sharp, little pants echoed throughout the room, as did the frequent sound of skin slapping against what was basically skin while Aria worked even harder to give Rimmer pleasure. She rubbed vigorously at that spot, just under the head.  
  
“OHHBLOODYBUGGERINGHELL!” came his exclamation, tumbling out incoherently.  
  
“That’s it. Let it happen.” she purred.  
  
She kept at it, faster and harder until it felt as though her hand would fall off, and even then she kept on going. Still, nothing more happened. She knew what she had to do next, and it scared her. But touch wasn’t enough anymore like she hoped it would be.

 _Ah, fuck it._ She set her limits and did it anyway, pleading she wouldn’t be triggered.  
  
Hazel eyes flew wide as her mouth closed around him before sinking gradually southwards. Rimmer gripped onto the side of the headboard while the other hand clasped onto the back of her neck. Unable to keep his grasp any longer, his fingertips squeaked against the oak. He frantically searched for something to take hold of just to stay grounded, until her hand grabbed onto his.  
  
She peered up at him, relishing in the fruition she was bringing him with each movement of her tongue, swirling across the head and slipping into his slit. The noises he was uttering alone was making her sopping wet.  
  
Despite having her mouth full, a grin played across her reddened lips as she watched his waist arch toward her; she watched as his pelvic muscles spasmed. She felt him pulsing harder in her mouth, which was her cue to pull away. A gasp of much-needed air rushed through her after having to hold it in. She then got her bearings and continued using her hand, in spite of how sore as her wrist was.  
  
Chambering over his slick, patchily flushed body, she held her chest aloft his wet, sticky erection while still pumping him. She could tell that with each sloppy thrust he was getting closer to the edge, the point of no return.  
  
Right as she looked down, she saw him twitch hard one last time before cum had erupted from him like lava from a volcano. It hit her breasts, and she watched as simulated, watery jets of cloudy white substance dripped off her and back onto his lower abdomen.

There it was — _that_ look; his eyebrows lifted, one eye closed while the other remained slightly open, his jaw slacking and mouth somewhat ajar, allowing a blissful and satisfied moan to escape.  
  
“Well now! Big splooges for a big man,” she cooed in a deep, unshy tone.  
  
Rimmer sucked in his lower lip and bit it, only to let it slip from his teeth. “I’m — ssorry,” he slurred, panting rhythmically with his ejaculations.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Too — early-oh-fuck-me!” His words started out strained then fell out low as he began to uncoil.  
  
Though he was nowhere near done. His juices gushed out, occasionally shooting out in long streams. Aria had lost count at ten times. Eventually, it slowed to a trickle before fully stopping, leaving him lying like a limp noodle; a trembling, content wreck of a man.  
  
“Actually,” she began as she wiped up a bit of hard light jizz with her finger and studied it before sliding it into herself. A stammering exhale left her, the sensation of the two finally mingling together turning her mind to mush. “you’re bang on time.”


End file.
